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Arthur
Alfonso Schomburg
(1874-1938)
bibliophile, historian, writer, collector, curator
* * * * * In the Sistine Chapter
By
Arthur A. Schomburg
Three unrelated happenings in diverse places
in the world and all widely separated in point of time, serve to
demonstrate the unique services rendered by Negroes in the field
of religion.
I shall first tell of the most recent
circumstance which occurred just prior to the outbreak of the
Civil War. During this period one of the elected
representatives to the Congress was notoriously unfriendly to
the Negro in many of his remarks and addresses delivered in the
House of Representatives. He lost no opportunity to utter
derogatory opinions regarding the people of African descent. He
was popularly known to the masses of people as "Sunset
Cox."
Sometime during the year 1852, Cox and his
family took a trip to Europe, and concluded the tour with a
visit to the Eternal City. The bitterness that he had expressed
in his speeches throughout his public life as a representative
from the State of Ohio would have been forgotten in the passage
of time had it not been for his book
Buckeye Abroad,
Wanderings in Europe and in the Orient. By some mysterious
spiritual attraction, he wandered through the magnificent
corridors and chambers of the Vatican and the great
basilica of
St. Peter's.
In the book, he told of the many wonderful
paintings by Michael Angelo and the other great artists, whose
works bring joy and comfort to the minds of the religious
believers who silently walk on the tessellated floor of the
greatest religious institution in the world. On the occasion
when he visited the
Sistine Chapel, a seldom ceremonial was
being conducted, and he beheld several Cardinals, priests,
monks, deacons, etc. Here, too, he saw the supreme Pontiff in
his robes surrounded by dignitaries in every degree and shade of
color. Soon, the choir singing the responses stopped and the
sound gently died away in the vastness of this sacred sanctuary.
* * * *
Now let us hear the American Congressman:
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. . . . Soon there arises in this
chamber of theatrical glitter, a plain unquestioned
African, and he utters the sermon in facile Latinity, with
graceful manner. His dark hands gestured harmoniously with
the rotund periods, and his swart visage beamed with a
high order of intelligence. He was an
Abyssinian.
What a commentary was here upon our
American prejudices. The head of the great
Catholic
Church, surrounded by the ripest scholars of the age,
listening to the eloquence of the despised Negro; and
thereby illustrating to the world the common bond of
brotherhood which binds the human race. I confess that, at
first, it seemed to me a sort of theatrical mummery, not
being familiar with such admixture of society.
But, on reflection, I discerned in it
the same influence which, during the dark Ages, conferred
such inestimable blessings on mankind. History records,
that from the time when the barbarians overran the Western
empire to the time of the revival of letters, the
influence of the Church of Rome had been generally
favorable to science, to civilization, and to good
government.
Why? Because her system held them, as
it holds now, all distinctions of caste as odious. She
regards no man, bond or free, white or black, as
disqualified for the priesthood. This doctrine has, as
McCauley develops in his introductory chapter to his
English history, mitigated many of the worst evils of
society; for where race tyrannized over race, or baron
over villein.
Catholicism came between them, and
created an aristocracy altogether independent of race or
feudalism, compelling even the hereditary master to kneel
before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondsman.
The childhood of Europe was passed
under the guardianship of priestly teachers; who taught,
as the scene in Sistine Chapel of an Ethiop addressing the
proud rulers of catholic Christendom teaches, that no
distinction is regarded as Rome, save that which divides
the priest from the people.
The sermon of the
Abyssinian, in
beautiful print was distributed at the door. I bring one
home as a trophy and as a souvenir of a great truth which
Americans are prone to deny or contemn. |
Here our friend
Sunset
Cox further comments on
what he has seen and heard:
|
Ah! different—far different—is Rome
now! Today I heard before the assembled Cardinals and
Pope, a dark-skinned Abyssinian—a student of the
Propaganda—grow eloquent in classic Latin, over the mercy
and love of that Saviour whose precepts teach the equal
right of all to live, and that--forever. |
A few years later the distinguished
"gentlemen from Ohio" rose in the
House of
Representatives to discuss some phase of the
Slavery Question, and
had launched into an eloquent defense of slavery in America. A
fellow-representative arose and called his attention to what he
had written about the Negro when he had been a spectator at the
solemn ceremony in the
Cathedral of St. Peter and the sermon was
delivered by a Negro who was the preacher of the day.
The reading of this portion of the book created
a mild sensation in the
House of
Representatives. In our Congress
the members are generally representative of the best American
tradition, and yet with all the brilliance of education, all the
talent and culture few of these men had read the
Buckeye Abroad!
We must conclude that the content of the
printed sermon "of the Abyssinian" that was handed to
him was unknown to Mr. Cox, was beyond his ability to translate,
otherwise we believe that he would have handed to posterity the
name of this black Abyssinian who we are reminded in beautifully
intoned Latin had received the reward of merit from the
distinguished, enlightened body gathered together on this
occasion.
* * * *
Nor should we regard this as the only instance
where the Negro has been given an opportunity to show the spirit
of the image of his Maker carved in ebony. Let us consider two
historical incidents that took place nearly two centuries ago and
which, to my mind, appear remarkable, in spite of the fact that
they are little known.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, to
wit, in 1608.
King Alvaro of the Congo and his African nation had
been converted to Christianity by missionaries who had followed
the Portuguese navigators in order to spread the gospel of love
and light among the benighted people. Chapels and churches were
erected to the Eternal God in West Africa. Later on the King sent
Antonius Emanuel Marchino de Wunth as his legate before the
Catholic Pontiff.
This ebony-hued dignitary was received with all
the pomp and ceremonials that a duly credited representative was
entitled to receive in Rome. This man was born and reared in the
Congo and, during his sojourn in Rome, was taken sick and soon
thereafter passed on to his peaceful reward. The earthly comfort
of the Viaticum was administered, bringing him closer to spiritual
affinity with his Maker. Prayers were offered for his recovery by
representatives of the Church brought to him all the consolations
of the Church regardless of his color or previous condition in
life.
He had come to the
Papal State as the kindly
ambassador of a Christian Kingdom, and as such was received and
fully accredited. He had been the recipient of all the princely
honors the Catholic Church bestows upon its faithful members. The
picture, shown elsewhere, is an illustration of what took place in
those early days. These small panels illustrate some of the
services that were rendered to this Christian emissary.
* * * *
For our third instance, we are indebted to the
Spanish historian, Muñoz, whose services in the field of letters
and preservation of the manuscripts and the material dealing with
the discovery and colonization of the Americas was outstanding.
Although this material had been scattered in the various
repositories, it was brought together tot he happy possessor of
many volumes on source material on the vast mainland of central
and South America.
While examining one of Muñoz's
manuscript books on Mexico, I located an entry that was singularly
interesting in that it stated that the ship that had crossed the
Atlantic Ocean landed its passengers and other persons in the
services of the Spanish Crown on the coast of
Vera Cruz in Mexico.
The religious brothers were looking around for a place of worship
to erect an altar for the sacred vessels, bless the ground and
give thanks for their happy arrival in America.
At a loss for a place where the servants of
Christ could offer divine services they approached the humble hut
of a colored woman to whom they explained their mission. This poor
black woman turned over her home to the missionaries and it is
stated by Muñoz that it was there that the first services
in Vera Cruz was offered to the Eternal God. Was not this another
manifestation of the guidance of
Divine Providence in spread of
Christian institutions in the new world to bring the light of
religion to its people?
I like to regard these three important and
significant events as convincing demonstrations of the unique
contributions of the Negro in the field of religion. Each may be
termed an example of a virtuous life like the case of Theresa of
Salamata, the black girl who was found on the West African beach
and brought to Cadiz, Spain. Here, she was befriended by the
Spanish King who placed her in the care of a most exemplary
lady-in-waiting to the Queen, who gave her a Christian education.
Her loving response and devotion brought her to
the Convent of the City of Salamata, where, through
self-abnegation and prayer, she rose to high honors in a country
where she had been unknown. Years later in this very sanctuary she
closed her eyes in a peaceful slumber; a lesson to those of us who
seldom find time to reflect, study and pray in that realm of
solitude that brings lasting comfort to hearts burdened with worry
and anxiety.
References
Cox, S.S.
Buckeye Abroad. New York, 1952.
Kilian, Lucas. Portrait of Gefandten des Konigs
ron Congo, p. 997, 1608.
Muñoz, J.B. MSS on America. New York
Public Library.
Sandoval, Alonso. Historia de todos los Etiopes,
p, 476. Servila, 1647.
Vida de la Venerable Negra la Madre Sor Theresa
Juliana de Santo Domingo, En Zaragoza, 1757 in MSS (Schomburg
Collection, NYPL)
Source: Interracial Review (May
1938) * * *
* * Arthur A. Schomburg
We share with our many friends the deep
feeling of loss caused by the death recently of
Arthur A. Schomburg. Negro scholar and curator of the Division of Negro
Literature, History, and Prints in the 135th Street branch of
the New York Public Library.
Dr. Schomburg was a valued contributor to the
Review—his last article having appeared in our May issue.
Modest and retiring in manner, he was outstanding in a field he
knew to be of great importance to his race.
Born in Puerto Rico, he began early to take
an active interest in Negro literature and art. While engaged in
various occupations he painstakingly assembled a collection of
rare manuscripts, first editions and prints, some of which went
back to the earliest settlements on the American continents. In
1926, his collection, then considered one of the most complete
of its kind, was purchased by the
Carnegie Foundation and
presented to the Public Library. In 1927, he won a bronze medal
and one hundred dollars from the
Harmon Foundation for
outstanding work in the field of education.
His work was important in that he preserved
for his race and abundance of historic material which furnishes
the kind of inspiration that serves any people as a spur to
advancement.
Source: Interracial Review
(July 1938) / See also:
http://www.africawithin.com/schomburg/schomburg.htm
* * *
* *
Puerto
Rican contributions to Black History Month
By
Maria Rosa
February is
Black
History Month in the United States. And hallways,
libraries and classrooms in public schools throughout the
country showcase important figures from black history.
I remember working in one
of these schools in the City of Buffalo named
Herman Badillo Community School. Although many Puerto Rican
children attended this school, the bulletin boards showcased
important figures from black history in the African-American
community.
So, a few years ago, I
developed an exhibit for
Black
History Month that showcased the important black figures in
our history. I thought it was important for Latino children to
know and appreciate their own black origins.
Yet, there is a little
forgotten fact about how this celebration started. Many think
it was the African-American scholar
Dr.
Carter G. Woodson responsible for starting it and he had
contributed to founding it, but the origins Black
History Month started when the
black bibliophiles (book
collectors) had showcased their books through exhibitions that
lasted a week in the second decade of the early twentieth
century in New York City.
One of the most prominent
of these early book collectors
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938) had amassed a private
book collection after he immigrated from Puerto Rico in 1891 at
age 17.
Schomburg sought better
work opportunities and had joined others already in New York
City from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands involved in
the war of independence against Spanish colonialism in Cuba and
Puerto Rico.
The bibliophiles exhibited
their works through the auspices of the
Negro Society for Historical Research Schomburg co-founded
with the African-American journalist and Prince Hall Mason
John E.
Bruce in 1911. During the same period in 1915, Dr. Woodson
founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
Dr. Woodson admired the
week-long exhibits that showcased the books and other black
history memorabilia of Schomburg and the early black
bibliophiles took the idea called it Negro History Week.
29
January 2011
Source:
BuffaloPuertoRicanPress
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* *
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Schomburg:
Chronicler of the Black Diaspora
a Precursor of
Biracial America
By
Jonathan Tilove |
 |
By all rights, February
ought to be a month when
Arthur Schomburg is especially well remembered.
It is Black History Month,
and no one did more than Schomburg, who died in 1938, to collect
black history and provide black people throughout the world with
documentary evidence of who they mare. His extraordinary
legacy—the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem—is
the world’s foremost archive of the African diaspora.
And yet Schomburg remains
in the rear tier of black history heroes, little known and often
mistaken, on the strength of his name and a stereotype, to have
been a Jewish philanthropist who endowed the collection.
“I was in the Schomburg one
day about five years ago and saw somebody guiding a group of
black schoolchildren, describing Schomburg as the Jewish man who
had given the library the money,” said Columbia University
historian Winston James.
More of the pity, for the
true story of Arthur Schomburg’s identity is intriguing.
He was African-American, a
central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. He was Puerto Rican
born and raised, intensely involved in both the Puerto Rican and
Cuban independence movements. He was son of St. Croix, his
mother’s native land, living for a while as a young man in the
Virgin Islands.
And he was, in ideology and
purpose, a pioneering Pan-Africanist, conceiving, connecting and
archiving the history of African peoples across boundaries of
nation, culture and language, extending the understanding of
blackness in America to a place before slavery and beyond the
borders of the United States.
More remarkable, he did it
all without academic credentials, on his own time, with mostly
his own money while working 23 years for Bankers Trust Company
in New York, and rising to a supervisory position in the foreign
correspondence section of the mail room. He retired at the end
of 1929 with an annual pension of $1,243.66.
“He was looking for his
identity,” said
Elinor Des Verney Sinnette, and in the process “he did a
hell of a job documenting the history of black people all over
the world.”
Sinnette, a retired
librarian at Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center, is the author of the 1989 book
Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile & Collector,
his only full-length biography.
Schomburg was born in
Puerto Rico in 1874. In the most popular version of his defining
moment, a fifth-grade teacher told him that black people were
without history, heroes or great moments. He determined he would
gather the evidence to prove otherwise.
In 1891, at the age of 17,
moved to New York. It was in 1925, in the midst of the Harlem
Renaissance, that he wrote the essay, “The
Negro Digs Up His Past,” in which he most famously laid out
his guiding rationale.
“The American Negro must
remake his past in order to make his future,” Schomburg wrote.
“Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country
where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the
nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the
Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for
persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice.
History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the
social damage of slavery that the present generations must
repair and offset.”
In 1926, the New York
Public Library, with a $10,000 grant from the Carnegie
Corporation, bought Schomburg’s collection and the following
year opened it to the public at the 135th Street
Branch Library.
Sixty-five years after
Schomburg’s death at age 64, the themes of his life and work
seem remarkably current, proof of the porousness of what are too
often regarded as ironclad categories of race, ethnicity and
culture.
Schomburg was the
forerunner of a more fluid and mixed identity now very much in
vogue. Forgotten as he may be by the broader public, he is
fought over by a new wave of scholars who each “desire to claim
bragging rights over Schomburg’s memory,” as
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, who teaches Latino studies at the
University of Michigan, put it in a 2001 paper in the Journal of
American Ethnic History.
Schomburg, according to
Sinnette, referred to himself as an
Afroborinqueno, a Puerto Rican of African descent, but today
scholars comb his life for clues of shifting allegiances.
They study his causes,
clubs, Masonic affiliations, heroes and friendships, the
neighborhoods he lived in, the books he collected, the places he
traveled, the music he appreciated, the food he loved. They note
his disillusion and disgust with the course of Cuban and Puerto
Rican nationalist politics, and his disdain for the clannishness
of black artists in New York who snubbed the Cuban painter who
Schomburg hosted at his home for nearly a year.
They point out that he
married three successive African-American women. (All named
Elizabeth, the first two died while married to Schomburg, the
third survived him). They observe that he gave all but one of
his eight children Spanish first or middle names, but that he
did not want them to speak Spanish. They puzzle over the
identity of his father, and pay close attention to how he signed
his name.
“Blacks call him Arthur,
said Angelo Falcon, the president of the
Institute for Puerto Rican Policy in New York. “We call him
Arturo (his given name).”
“Everyone wants to claim
him for their own cultural, intellectual or historical
purposes,” said Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez, an English professor of
the University of Texas at Austin, who wrote about Schomburg in
her 2001 book, “Boricua Literature: Writings of the Puerto Rican
Diaspora.”
“I think Schomburg would be
laughing and happy that the African-American and Puerto Rican
communities are fighting over who he belongs to the most,” said
Sanchez Gonzalez. “In his lifetime I think he felt rejected by
both.”
As his biography suggests,
Schomburg not only catalogued the African diaspora, he lived it
in ways that American conventions of race-counting have always
had trouble capturing.
Earlier this year the
Census Bureau recorded that Hispanics, as of July 2001, were for
the first time more numerous than blacks in America (unless you
included in the black count those who considered themselves both
black and some other race, in which case that total still
exceeded the tally of those identifying as Hispanics—which is
considered by the Census not a race but an ethnicity or
ancestry). But Schomburg offers vivid evidence that then, as
now, people can be both Hispanic and black. According to those
2001 estimates, some 1.5 million Americans describe themselves
as both and are counted in both columns in reckoning which
minority is the largest.
In his book
Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in
Early Twentieth Century America,
Winston James quotes Schomburg’s close friend, the Jamaican-born
poet
Claude McKay, writing in 1940 that blacks in Harlem cannot
“comprehend the brown Puerto Rican rejecting the appellation
‘Negro,’ and preferring to remain Puerto Rican. He is resentful
of the superior attitude of the Negroid Puerto Rican.”
But Schomburg was not like
that. He readily identified as black.
“The key to the singularity
of Schomburg as a Puerto Rican black nationalist lies in his
un-Puerto Rican family background,” writes James, who believes
that was primarily because Schomburg was raised by his mother, a
non-Hispanic black migrant worker from St. Croix. “It now
appears that the non-Hispanic heritage was equally strong, if
not stronger than, the Hispanic one.”
By contrast, Sanchez
Gonzalez, in making the case for Schomburg’s enduring Puerto
Ricanness, notes, how, toward the end of life,
W.E.B.
Du Bois and others in Harlem’s African-American
intelligentsia, sought to block Schomburg’s appointment as
curator of his own collection, by then owned by the New York
Public Library. Contemporary accounts in black newspapers in
Harlem suggest that “despite his reputation as the premier
African Diaspora archivist, Schomburg was still deemed an
outsider in New York City’s African-American intellectual
politics.”
Hoffnung-Garskof
steers a middle course, arguing that while Schomburg’s cultural
straddle no doubt caused him some hurt, his ability to cross
those lines, back and forth, was critical to his success.
Where everyone agrees is on
the indispensability of the archives that Schomburg created.
“There is no other center
like it in the world in the range and richness of its
collection,” said Winston James. “And it is unparalleled largely
due to Schomburg’s rather wide interests.”
Source: 2003 Newhouse News Services
* * * * *
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a.k.a. as
Arthur Schomburg, (January 24, 1874 –June 8, 1938), was a
Puerto Rican historian, writer, and activist in the United States
who researched and raised awareness of the great contributions that
Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society. He was an
important intellectual figure in the
Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, he collected literature, art,
slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which was
purchased to become the basis of the
Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his
honor, at the
New York Public Library branch in
Harlem. . . .
By the 1920s Schomburg had amassed
a world-renowned collection which consisted of artworks, manuscripts,
rare books,
slave narratives and other artifacts of
Black history. In 1926 the
New York Public Library purchased his collection for $10,000 with
the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The collection formed
the cornerstone of the Library's Division of Negro History at its 135th
Street Branch in
Harlem. The library appointed Schomburg curator of the collection,
which was named in his honor: the
Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Schomburg
used his proceeds from the sale to fund travel to Spain, France, Germany
and England, to seek out more pieces of black history to add to the
collection. In 2002, scholar
Molefi Kete Asante named Schomburg to his list of
100 Greatest African Americans.
To honor Schomburg,
Hampshire College awards a $30,000 merit-based scholarship in his
name for students who "demonstrate promise in the areas of strong
academic performance and leadership at Hampshire College and in the
community."
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg's work
served as an inspiration to
Puerto Ricans,
Latinos and
Afro-Americans alike. The power of knowing about the great
contribution that
Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society, helped
continuing work and future generations in the
Civil rights movement.— Wikipedia
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* * * * *
|
Arthur Alfonso Schomburg
Black Bibliophile and Collector
By Elinor Des
Verney Sinnette
This is the
first full biography of the pioneering black
collector whose detective work laid the foundation
for the study of black history and culture. Born in
Puerto Rico in 1874, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg came
to New York militantly active in Caribbean
revolutionary struggles. He searched out the hidden
records of the black experience and built a
collection of books, manuscripts, and art that had
few rivals. Today it forms the core of the New York
Public Library's Schomburg Center for research in
Black Culture, one of the leading collections in the
field.
At the center
of the Harlem Renaissance, Schomburg was a generous
friend of many of the writers, artists, performers,
collectors, scholars, and political figures who made
Harlem the capital of Black America. A contributor
to the major black journals of the period, he went
on to head the Negro Collection at Fisk University
and became curator of his own collection in the New
York Public Library until his death in 1938. |
 |
* * * * *
 |
Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia
Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century
America
By Winston
James
A major history
of the impact of Caribbean migration to the United
States.
Marcus Garvey, Claude
McKay,
Claudia Jones, C.L.R.
James, Stokely
Carmichael,
Louis Farrakhan—the roster of immigrants from
the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the
development of radical politics in the United States
is extensive. In this magisterial and lavishly
illustrated work, Winston James focuses on the
twentieth century's first waves of immigrants from
the Caribbean and their contribution to political
dissidence in America. Examining the way in which
the characteristics of the societies they left
shaped their perceptions of the land to which they
traveled, Winston James draws sharp differences
between Hispanic and English-speaking arrivals. He
explores the interconnections between the Cuban
independence struggle, Puerto Rican nationalism,
Afro-American feminism, and black communism in the
first turbulent decades of the twentieth century. He
also provides fascinating insights into the impact
of Puerto Rican radicalism in New York City and
recounts the remarkable story of Afro-Cuban
radicalism in Florida. |
* *
* * *
update 6 February 2011 |
